


Jewel In The Crown

by xuhei



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: F/M, Florist AU, idk man this was fun to write so here you go, jooheon is the 'me' best friend, kihyun is also a virgin, minhyuk is actually an asshole???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 23:18:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10524012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xuhei/pseuds/xuhei
Summary: “You look really nice by the way,” Kihyun tells you. He’d slipped his hand round your waist and was comfortably guiding you down the road now with minimal distance between the two of you. “Ignore that. You look beautiful. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> so basically, read this with a warning of smut that really is shit because i wasn't feeling it and like i awkwardly wrote it based on something else i wrote. inspired by a moodboard about florist kihyun i made and honestly,,, i love him. he's my bias wrecker and im sure this is very evident. important reminder to stan monsta x

_Flowers._ They’re such a strange way of telling someone you love them, or saying happy birthday or just as a general gift. It’s basically saying ‘ _here are some plants that will die soon, enjoy them while you still can!’_. They’re grown to survive until the winter yet we cut them to present to others for a moment of beauty to express true feelings.

“How _emo_ ,” you mumble, taking note of the dark red and black flowers all grouped together in the corner of the room. Fake flowers. It had been your own way of moving past the phase of beautiful things dying. “About as emo as EXO’s Christmas album. I bet Yoojung would love these as well.”

Talking to yourself seemed to be a common thing these days, especially since you were forced out of your apartment by Yoojung to make some friends, or _something like that_. You had friends – Jooheon spent ninety nine per cent of the time in the basement and Changkyun was always with his girlfriend but they were still friends. Good friends, at the least. The four of you had been friends for too long to desert you now.

Plus, who else would stand at the dead of midnight to help Jooheon hand out mix tapes? Certainly not Changkyun or Yoojung.

But there were flowers galore here – fake _and_ real. It was almost as beautiful as the fake flower shops that lined the streets in Hong Kong. _Almost_. The store workers here were really letting the place down. They were all old men and women who has lived their lives and had a passion for _fake flowers._ How emotional.

Somehow, kids were still being allowed to run around the store unattended by their guardian. Cute as it was, your training in the art of _kids_ told you that someone was going to smash something and it had you a little on edge. Maybe that was the four cases you’d had to stop shaking _already_ that we’re talking. Who knows? All you wanted was some pink roses to give to ahjumma downstairs who brought Jooheon in when he was drunk.

You also wanted some new friends.

Yet still, all that was in your view was the black and red roses that screamed _goth family heaven_ which you found no reason for. They were out of place and the roses weren’t in any colour. There must have been a wedding parade or something and the bride must have taken all the white and pink roses for a group of people to throw at her in envy.

And now EXO’s Christmas album was playing through the left ear bud you still kept in. _For Life_ , too, talk about a depressing moment you never wanted to relive. Staring at black and red roses that were as fake as Yoojung when she told you red lipstick _really_ suited you, listening to For Life like it’s still Christmas. It’s September. Why are you even listening to this song anymore?

 _Aha!_ It takes you a while but eventually you see a patch of pink in amongst the sea of red and black, and it allows a sigh to fall from your lips and your eyebrows to increase in utter thanks to whatever god was looking down at you and blessing you with an early return home, meaning you could pretend to be asleep before Changkyun asked you to drive him somewhere.

But you still hate Seoul, that’s a fact. You imagine you would not get this trouble down in Jeonju with Sejeong who probably made the wisest decision of all to move away from the city.

You only hate it even more when you finally reach the pink patch that you were _sure_ looked more like roses from the other side of the room and discover that it’s definitely not roses. _Shit_ , no, _that’s not roses._ It’s human hair and you’re standing opposite to whoever the really, _really_ cute pink hair belongs to, staring like they’re the best thing to ever exist in this world.

Ironic, really, because two seconds ago they were.  

“Can I help?” A voice asks. A _really nice_ voice asks, you correct yourself. You’re so absorbed in the fact you’ve fucked up that you hadn’t even realised that the person – boy you knew now, with a really attractive face and pouty lips that looked so kissable that you _should probably shut up now –_ had looked up to talk to you. “I said can I help?”

 _Oh_. He had an attitude, too. Charming. What employee gives you zero point two seconds to answer their very broad question. “I’m looking for pink roses. Fake pink roses.”

“ _Fake_?” He asks. He raises a brow at you and covers his arms over his chest before you even get a chance to look at his name badge. Just your luck really.

“Yeah. Fake. I want fake pink roses and I know you do them because I’ve bought them here before.”

“Oh,” is all he replies. His expression doesn’t change and instead he glances down at whatever had him so distracted before that he had managed to disguise himself as flowers. To be fair to him, he was pretty enough to blend in. “We run out this morning. But we have real ones if you were interested. I’m sure they’d be better to give to your boyfriend or girlfriend _or whatever_.”

You really want to see his name tag now. How judgemental of him! Someone obviously put a stick up his ass this morning and you weren’t exactly in the mood to deal with it. “Uh, yeah, whatever. I’ll look somewhere else.”

“Wait,” he calls, just as you’re turning around. He’s still on the other side of the counter but he must have stood up a little more because he looked much taller now that both his hands were on the counter – it even gave you a chance to look at his name badge.

 _Kihyun._ It was fitting, you supposed.

“Stay here and I’ll go look outback if we have any more. But no promises.”

He didn’t even spare you a second glance as he turned around and walked off towards the door marked _staff only_. Kihyun must have been in trouble with his boss or something to have been so quick to as for you back. Maybe his attitude sent too many customers away?

You supposed you could spare him by not making a complaint today. But only because he went outback to get something for you. He was let off just this once.

“Can I help you?” Another voice calls. This one is much more relaxed and you are far happier to turn around and speak to this one. He doesn’t cover his name badge so it’s the first thing you look at so you can start off a lot friendlier with this guy – or, as you see, Minhyuk.

Minhyuk has bleached blond hair that’s iced white for the majority of it. He’s also pretty, maybe even prettier than Kihyun but the way he smiles is so enticing that it almost makes you wish he’d bought all the flowers around you for _you_.

“I’m okay, thanks,” you tell him, offering a smile back. You glance back at the door that Kihyun had gone through, then look back to Minhyuk. It was weird referring to them by name considering you’d not had a formal introduction. “Your colleague went to look for something for me. I just wanted some of these fake roses in pink for a neighbour.”

Minhyuk nods at your words, head slightly to the side as though each of your words is scripture to him. “That’s sweet of you? What did they do?”

“Saved a friend of mine who was moments away from being arrested because they forgot their house key,” you admit shyly.

"Have you thought about getting them lilies instead?” Minhyuk suggests. He gestures over to a another part of the room by the escalator leading downstairs to the garden decorations.

“Actually, no.”

“Well they can mean a lot of things but in some Chinese traditions they’re a symbol for motherly qualities,” Minhyuk tells you, “maybe they would make a good alternative to roses for now, since a lady came by here and picked up all our pink roses for her wedding. Pink roses remind me of… love, to be honest with you. It’s the sort of thing that you’d get a partner.”

He phrased it far better than Kihyun did. When you think about it realistically, it did seem like you were coming here to pick up those roses for Jooheon and not his knight in shining armour. Speaking of, the very boy who was doing you a favour caught your attention by appearing out of the corner of your eye. Except there wasn’t one pink blur you could see, there was two.

“Found some!” He announces rather loudly. There’s a smile on his face that seems too fake for your liking but you don’t question it, instead opting to stay emotionless as he approaches you with them.

“Kihyun was helping you, right,” Minhyuk says quietly. You can almost see the disappointment in his face but when he looks back to you he regains his smile. “It’s lucky you’ve got some! Maybe it’s best that you give her the roses after all. They are the jewel in the crown after all.”

Kihyun, now beside Minhyuk and shoving the wrapped up bouquet in his hands (that you were sure weren’t sold like this) towards you, nods dramatically. “Since I went through all the effort to find you these, you should definitely take them. They’ll be great for your boyfriend, or your girlfriend!”

“They’re for her neighbour,” Minhyuk comments dryly. He doesn’t even look at Kihyun and instead focuses on the black of the other roses.

“Even better!” Kihyun exclaims. You wonder if he knows how fake he’s being right now. Surely this is for show. Maybe Minhyuk is his boss? No, no – Minhyuk had stars on his badge that surely meant employee of the month. “You can use them to confess to the person you want! We do cards downstairs that you can write a message in and give to whoever you want so that they know how much you mean to them.”

You’re the one frowning now. He over did it too much and now he looked like an idiot. A part of you wanted to laugh but _holy shit did he look that hot before?_ Kihyun should have been a model. He’d look good posing with flowers. “I’m not confessing to anyone, but thank you. I’ll take them, Kihyun.”

He looks smug as you gently take the bouquet from his hands and pull them to your chest. The bouquet itself was made beautifully with extra pieces of ribbon around it and some foliage around the edges that gave it an extra positive _thank you_ connotation. You were thankful, because maybe he just saved his ass from being fired and got you something that deserved to be in a wedding parade.

“I pay downstairs, right?” You ask, seeing as the two boys in front of you are waiting around for you to say something.

“Yeah, I’ll show you,” Minhyuk says gently. He looks at Kihyun who is no longer smiling and loons the same as he did when he first spoke to you. “Kihyun can you please stay up here and help the ladies by the pansies? Thanks.”

It was bitter. So bitter you almost taste it – maybe they didn’t like each other or maybe one had snaked on the other for something. You weren’t sure, nor did you really mind. You wanted to go home and pretend to sleep to avoid Changkyun and then have Jooheon harass you about whatever he was producing now and then sit next to Yoojung and watch a pretty sad movie about whatever.

So you just followed Minhyuk downstairs who stayed quiet the whole time, opting once or twice to ask you about where you were from and if you liked Seoul, ex cetera, until he took the flowers from you and disappeared around the corner to get a bag for you to carry them home in. Since you told him you lived moderately far away, of course. When he reappeared he had the genuine smile on his face and it warmed up every bone in your body, almost making you forget that more sad EXO songs were playing in the background.

“Twenty one thousand won, please,” Minhyuk asks. He waits for you to hand over the money and even though it seems a little cheap for how many roses there are in there, you don’t argue. It will buy you extra Chinese food on Saturday. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How often do you come here?” Minhyuk says. He almost looks a little nervous, with his left hand touching the back of his head and scratching a little.

“Whenever I need flowers, I guess,” you answer with a shrug.

“Next time you come here, ask for me and I’ll be sure to help you,” he tells you with a grin. It’s just after you bow your head slightly and take the flowers that he realises you’ve not been introduced, and he scrambles to catch your attention before you walk away. “M-My name is Minhyuk, by the way. Ask for me. I’d really like to see you around here again.”

You nod at his words, biting down on your bottom lip as you turn away with heat powdered all over your cheeks. He was cute. Like, really cute. Cuter than Jooheon’s aegyo and Changkyun when he talks to that damn girlfriend.

You’re even more surprised when you get outside the store and finally get to have a proper look at what you’ve just bought that there’s a very specific index car that’s a beautiful pink colour with writing on it. It makes your heart beat a little faster when you read the message it holds, along with a number.

_You’re beautiful – you should trust me about that, I work with flowers after all._

♡♡♡♡

Jooheon is watching you very closely. Truthfully, you were trying to act like the music playing through your headphones was enough to distract you from him. He surprisingly doesn’t harass you about why you’re ignoring him and instead just… _stares._ Yoojung must have told him something. What could she even tell him?

**_new message: lee minhyuk_ **

_fair enough – I wouldn’t want to be out tonight, it’s too cold.. does that mean you’re free to meet up with me?_

Oh. That was what she could tell Jooheon about. The boy you’ve been talking about ever since you said _hi_ to him and told him you were _that girl from the flower shop_ , _thanks for leaving your number!_

“What’s his name?” Jooheon asks. You could have _tried_ to play it off and pretend not to hear him but you look up the second he says something – curse your inability to act casual and stick to a role. It was the main cause of you failing performing arts. Or, maybe the fact your cheeks burned from being caught grinning at your phone but Jooheon set you off completely.

“He?” You question. You lock your phone halfway through the message and pull out an earbud. “Excuse me, but I could be texting my girlfriend. So fuck off.”

“If you had a girlfriend I would be the first to know. And anyway, I heard about this guy from Yoojung. She says you smile when he texts you and you’re doing that right now so… I’m just assuming.”

You roll your eyes rather dramatically. “I’ll get a restraining order on you, Jooheon.”

“You wouldn’t do that to the only person you love!” Jooheon exclaims. He jumps out of his seat and runs to you, crouching on the floor in front of you. “What’s his name?”

“Sorry?”

“His name. The flower boy. What is it?”

“Minhyuk,” you mumble. Try all you want, resisting Jooheon’s dimples and overly affectionate puppy dog eyes was not something easily accomplished.  Only years and _years_ of practice could allow someone to successfully bypass his looks. “Lee Minhyuk.”

Jooheon audibly gasps and it even makes Changkyun look up from his laptop with a frown. This was probably the first night he’d been home in months and now he was having to adjust to Jooheon again. “He has such a cute name! Wow, I can see the bells ringing already. Can I meet him? If you two get married we’ll all have the surname Lee and then we can be… Triple Lee? The Three Lees? What sounds best?”

“None of them,” you answer with an eye roll. Though Jooheon pouts, you don’t retract your statement. “I want to go on a date with him first, okay. You can meet him when I’m sure he likes me and I’m not just attracted to his really iced blond hair and wide eyes and pouty lips and… It’s just a crush, Jooheon. We’re not getting married.”

Jooheon stands up abruptly and cocks his head to the side, grinning widely once more as he throws his arms in the air. “Yet! Tell him I want to be invited and that we’re having an after party which I will make the playlists for. Oh, and text him back!”

You let a small thank you leave your lips as Jooheon heads off towards his room. Yoojung wasn’t going to be home until late and Changkyun was probably only going to talk to you if he wanted some food (to which Jooheon would somehow hear too, and come bursting in demanding chicken strips and yoghurt) – so theoretically you had the day to yourself.

**_message_ ** _**to: lee minhyuk**_

_I think it does, actually! Where do you want to go? It will be nice to see you_

That wasn’t even a lie. You really did want to see him – he was definitely cute and a great catch over text. Though he did sound a little different by text, you were strangely attracted to it. Minhyuk, in general, was a really good guy that was probably too good for you but you were going to take advantage of the fact he hadn’t started to ignore you.

**_message from: lee minhyuk_ **

_It’ll be good to see you too_

**_message from: lee minhyuk_ **

_There’s this café that stays open late near to Neulbom Park if you’re interested? It’s called Seutondu. I’m gonna be here until it closes_

You don’t squeal – well, you almost do but you manage to contain in so that Changkyun doesn’t give you one of those awkward side glances because of second hand embarrassment of your actions. But somehow, and this one you really aren’t sure of an explanation to, Jooheon’s door is opened and he pokes his head out to you.

“Date?” He asks, furrowed brows and straight lips.

“Uh—”considering that you’re still a little shook because of Jooheon’s seemingly telepathic skills of knowing your emotion without you even talking. He doesn’t even need you to tell him yes, your stutter is enough to confirm his word.“—yeah. Yeah I do.”

When Jooheon smiles it’s usually exaggerated but right now you actually fear his cheeks might burst. He looks happier than you’ve ever seen him before. “Come on! You’re getting ready with me and I’m going to make him fall in love with you even more!”

Jooheon wasn’t even joking.

He practically dragged you into his room and pulled out the first dress he found, holding it up to you and humming. He went through a few choices, going between skirts and jeans until he found his own definition for _the perfect outfit._ Of course it was only something Jooheon would ever pick out but you still liked it, you assumed Minhyuk would too. It wasn’t so dissimilar to what you wore to the flower shop before so hopefully Minhyuk wouldn’t mind.

Not that you exactly got a chance to say anything either, because Jooheon was shoving you out the door before you could even say goodbye to Changkyun telling you that he would talk to you tomorrow about it because he was going to hit the town tonight. In Jooheon speak, that meant stand outside karaoke bars handing out mixtape which was what you usually helped him with.

**_message to: lee minhyuk_ **

_I’ll be there in twenty minutes. See you soon!_

The exclamation mark made you sound needy. _Uh_. You were terrible at this.

**_message from: lee minhyuk_ **

_I thought you weren’t actually going to show up, but sure, see you in a bit - I’m by the window._

Not _so_ bad after all. You had it in you to go through with this and maybe pursue this crush you had until it became a little bit more than a crush. Yoojung did it with her current boyfriend who she met at a restaurant so you could one thousand per cent do it with Minhyuk, your florist boy who had a knack for describing beauty.

That didn’t mean you weren’t the most nervous you’ve ever been in your life though (with a few exceptions) as you began to approach the café with a lit up sign which you could clearly read as _Seutondu,_ an Internet café that Changkyun had brought you and Yoojung too ages ago to meet his girlfriend that, you both will admit, thought was fake for a bit.

But really who could blame you and Yoojung? Changkyun during school used to design his own computer games and only ever talked if he was spoken to. The only reason you and Yoojung ever spoke to him in the first place was because he was part of your group project for history. Something on the old dynasties in Asia; you’d only watched a load of dramas to make up for lost knowledge anyway.

Byun Baekhyun as a prince totally sold it for you.

“You’ve got this,” you say calmly to yourself. A pep talk that is meant to distract you as you walk through the door into Seutondu but only makes you want to walk back out and avoid this forever. _Curse this acute anxiety for other people judging you_.

You just tell yourself that it will be worse if you stand Minhyuk up. He’ll be annoyed and you’ll never be able to go back to that flower store and finalise your complaint on… what was his name? Ki…Ke…Kiseok. Something like that. It didn’t matter now. You’d find his name badge too.

There is not a chance in _hell_ that you’ve got this. At first you think you’re just a bit blind but you can’t see anyone who has hair like Minhyuk on this side of the café. The other side has windows, too, but surely he would sit near to the door so you could find him

But you could only see a sea of brown hair, apart from a few random colours like the blue that reminded you off Yoojung’s ombré and the pink that matched the roses and that guy whose hair was the colour of those roses. Yah, his name was really starting to bug you.

“Excuse me?” You call out to the lady behind the bar, rather quietly to avoid weird stares. She nods, accepting your request with a small smile. “Is there anyone round there sitting by the window with white blond hair?”

She frowns at your question - she’s trained in the art of coffee making and not date spotting, but turns to the side and proceeds to walk to the other end of the bar to peek around the corner. Must to your dismay, she turns back to you and shakes her head.

It hurts inside to know she thinks you’ve been stood up by your date, but she mouths ‘ _sorry_ ’ and goes back to washing her dishes as you whip your phone out in the hopes you won’t sound like too much a loser because you couldn’t find Minhyuk in a crowd of people.

**_message to: lee minhyuk_ **

_Where are you sitting?_

There’s a ding when the message comes up as delivered, but you don’t manage to catch anyone looking down at their phone.

**_message from: lee minhyuk_ **

_Do you need glasses? First you mistake me for roses and now you can’t find me when I’m the only one with pink hair. I know a great eye doctor person. Whatever they’re called._

Is it possible to disappear? That would be such a great thing to do now. It’s not Minhyuk. It’s not the blond haired, brown eyed sweetheart who stuttered his words sometimes but knew so much about flowers. It’s not the person you think you’ve been talking to, it’s the person you couldn’t even remember the name of. It’s the rude, smug asshole who you really wanted to complain about, who has pink hair and amazing facial structure. The one who put their number on a card and called you beautiful was…

“ _Kihyun?”_

He turns at your call of his name and smiles. It’s a breathtaking smile and you wish that you can really appreciate just how _hot_ he actually is but you really are wishing you’d have just hit the town with Jooheon. “So you can find me in a crowd! Come, I bought you some coffee.”

"Right,” you answer, softly. You should really be more appreciative because he’s bought you coffee and you didn’t ask him to but you’re slightly shocked. All your movements are stiff as you approach the booth he’s sitting at.

“No need to seem so depressed,” Kihyun comments. He’s watching you closely as you sit down opposite to him, eyes burning into yours as you make sure not to look up to him. Nervous doesn’t even begin to explain how you feel, so instead you just remain silent as Kihyun pushes the cup of coffee in your direction. “You said you liked coffee before. With one sugar and extra milk. I remembered.”

He’s not this conceited, stuck up asshole that you thought he was before and it’s irritating because any girl would be lucky to be sitting opposite to him right now. Yet still, you can’t speak and any time you look up to Kihyun he meets your eyes and you’re honestly too embarrassed to say a word. You… have had a crush on him this whole time.

“Optometrist,” you state.

Kihyun looks up at you from the coffee mug he practically cradles in his hands and frowns. “Sorry?”

“You said eye doctor. Their real name is an optometrist, my friend needs glasses so I take them there all the time,” you tell him. Kihyun, after having adjusted to the fact you weren’t talking, seems a little confused as to why you’re talking about eyes and doctors. “I’m sorry, I…uh…wasn't—”

“—expecting me? I noticed. But either way, I’m still the person you’ve been texting this whole time. I just have a different face. Unless you’re really shallow and you only text me because you thought I had a nice face.”

“But you still _do_ have a nice face,” you rush to tell him. It comes out in a far different way to what you expected and you almost want to tape up your mouth so you never talk again. “I-I mean, you’re pretty nice personality wise, too.”

Kihyun hums, intrigued by your words. “I’ll take that as a compliment. But do you mind me asking who you thought you were going to meet here instead?”

“Does it matter?”

“To me, it matters a lot.”

“Please don’t be annoyed,” you mumble quietly. Kihyun is clearly even more intrigued now and just wants you to say who it is. You’re sure it will shatter his ego but you might as well just do it. He asked, after all. “Well, that guy you work with. I thought it was him, I guess.”

“Minhyuk?” Kihyun asks.

You nod, cheeks burning from admitting all this. There was no chance anything could ever happen between you two after this. “I just assumed it was him because you never told me your name he’d been downstairs and asked to see me again and—sorry. You shouldn’t have to listen to this. I’m really sorry. I can go if you want me to.”

“Why would I want you to go?” Kihyun questions, picking up the coffee cup and taking a sip from it.

“Uh, I think that’s obvious,” you answer. “I mean, I mistook you for another guy and I’m being really rude to you as well as antisocial because I’m really _really_ embarrassed right now, I feel awful towards you.”

Kihyun shakes his head, lips slightly curled into a smile at your words. It’s almost like he’s taking enjoyment in having you fall apart opposite him, but there’s also a genuine side behind his actions. “Look, I gave you my number because I liked you. Can’t we at least get to know each other before you decide we’re not going to work out?”

♡♡♡♡

“So it _wasn’t_ Lee Minhyuk?” Jooheon asks.

He has a stack of CDs in his hands that people are reluctant to take from him, and the flyers you carry are facing the same fate. It was gone midnight, about ten degrees below freezing and the only reason you were still here was because Jooheon gave you his gloves.

“No, it was Yoo Kihyun,” you tell Jooheon. He raises an eyebrow at you in confusion then leans back against the wall as though he’s trying to process what you’re saying. “And the weirdest thing is that he’s really nice and he didn’t even seem fazed that I mistook him for Minhyuk. He bought me coffee and walked me home and it was the nicest thing ever. I just expected Minhyuk, so it’s really weird.”

Jooheon nods knowingly. “Are you going to see him again?”

“I want to, but it’s hard to bring up. _Hey let’s go on another date? This time I won’t get you mixed up with someone else!”_

“He’ll understand,” Jooheon tells you. He places down his stack of CDs and picks on individual one up instead, a new incentive to give more out. “He’s a guy, he isn’t going to be all butt hurt because he never told you his name. Just text him and say you want to see him.”

“But it’s awkward!”

“It’s not! Text him now!”

You scowl at his words and shake your head. “It’s gone midnight, he’s probably sleeping and I’ll look so desperate if I’m like, _hey Kihyun, just me again, do you want to meet up because turns out I do actually miss you_!”

Jooheon, however, does not reply. He has a blank expression on his face and it seems as though he’s looking behind you. You don’t look, however, and instead just watch Jooheon until he meets your eyes and gestures his head towards whatever he was looking at behind you.

“That’s cute to be honest.” _Kihyun._ You know his voice too well for your own liking and it almost scares you into another plane of living. “I missed you too and figured that since it’s a Friday you’d be here, since you said this is what you do Fridays. Did you both need some help?”

You’re staring just as much as Jooheon was before. Kihyun, the flower boy with pretty eyes, looked completely different to all the other times you’ve seen him. He had black jeans on and a leather jacket that covered his arms along with his almost tight white shirt that really looked good on him. Really, _really_ good on him.

"H-Hi,” you say softly. “You can help if you like, but it’s pretty boring out here so don’t feel like you have to stay.”

Kihyun takes a step forward and pries some of the flyers from your hands, then turns to Jooheon and smiles. “Hi, I’m Kihyun. You must be Jooheon? I listened to your music on SoundCloud and it’s pretty good.”

“Thanks!” Jooheon exclaims. It doesn’t take much for him to warm up to strangers and you were sure than he was ready to be best friends with Kihyun now. “When did you change your hair?”

You turn to Jooheon with a frown, as does Kihyun. Unfortunately it dawns on you that Jooheon was assuming that Kihyun still had white hair and puppy dog eyes like Minhyuk, and now he was asking about it. _Great_. This was the last time you were telling Jooheon anything.

“It’s been like this for a while, actually,” Kihyun says. He looks very confused, too. You can only pray that Jooheon doesn’t try to interupt you before you can change the subject.

“Hey Jooheon why don’t you go get us all some coffee?” You ask. Your hand immediately reaches for your pocket and you toss him your purse to use so he’ll give you some alone time and not say anything that can potentially ruin your chances with Kihyun. “I’ll pay. We’ll hand these out, okay?”

Jooheon is quick to run off, much to your joy, not even asking Kihyun if he wanted anything. Honestly you weren’t sure if that made anything better in the end because it only left you standing opposite Kihyun who had a dorkish smile on his lips yet showed no signs of speaking any time soon. You’d have to start a conversation. That was okay, you were friends with one of the most unsocial people on earth. How did you usually start talking to Changkyun?

“So the Champions League,” you start, trying to keep a blank expression despite the stream of curse words in your head right now. This was tailored too much for Changkyun. “Uh, Arsenal are out now.”

Kihyun seems to grin a little wider and you’re really not sure if it’s just your imagination telling you he’s actually happy or—you need to stop thinking. “And so are Manchester City. I didn’t know you followed it.”

“To be honest, I don’t, my friend is a big fan and he doesn’t like talking much so every time he’s quiet I bring up soccer and he’s like _man yeah I know that’s awesome_ ex cetera, ex cetera. It’s a good conversation starter.”

“Jooheon?” Kihyun asks. You shake you head and he hums knowingly. “Ah, I was going to say. That boy looks overly friendly, not someone who doesn’t talk much. He’s nice by the way. How did you all meet?”

“School,” you answer, simply.

Kihyun nods. You don’t know much about him other than where he grew up and what he’s done since he left school, as he does with you. “Isn’t it weird, like, being friends with people who have known you since you were really young?”

“Not really. It makes us closer, I guess. If Jooheon ever tries me then I can bring up the fact he threw up on his first date because he had food poisoning but didn’t want to cancel because he was too shy to reschedule.”

“That’s true I suppose,” Kihyun comments. He looks to his left as though he’s thinking and turns back to you with sly smile. “Ya know, I actually went to school with Minhyuk and the guy I work with who had blond and blue hair. Did you see him?”

You nod timidly as you try to remember. “Middle floor, right?”

“Yeah, his name is Hoseok. We all went to school together so I’ve know them both since we were like eleven,” Kihyun tells you. It almost makes you wonder why they’re not close anymore, but Kihyun must have sensed your question. “We were all friends so we know a lot about each other and I guess it means we aren’t that close now because we can each ruin each other’s lives.”

“Surely it’s not that deep,” you mumble.

Kihyun, however, just laughs. He places his stack of flyers down by the wall with Jooheon’s CDs and moves back to you so he can sling an arm around your shoulders. “When I was fifteen I tried to impress this girl I liked by singing to her in front of my music class but my voice cracked half way through and the whole  school eventually knew about it.”

“She must have seen the intention behind it…”

“She pretended I didn’t exist for the next two years of her life,” Kihyun tells you. “It’s okay though, I got over it. I didn’t have a girlfriend so I passed all my exams, meanwhile Minhyuk didn’t and Hoseok… I don’t know what he was doing. But either way, Minhyuk was the one who told me to sing to her and I suppose I blame him a little for it all.”

Checkmate. You’re not really sure how to answer that – you don’t know Kihyun or Minhyuk or even Hoseok well enough to be judging them. Time to change the subject again. “We should go out again sometime. I really enjoyed spending time with you.”

“I never thought you would ask, to be honest,” Kihyun replies with a touch of humour in his voice. “You actually want to see _me_ this time?”

“Are you ever going to let me live that down?”

Kihyun shakes his head. “Try in like twenty years time.”

“How can you be sure we’ll know each other then?” You question. It brings a warm feeling to your heart at his words – you really wouldn’t mind knowing Kihyun in twenty years time or even _really_ knowing him in twenty years time.

Yoo Kihyun is very appealing to you, despite everything that’s happened in the past with him.

“I just know,” Kihyun tells you. He drops his hand down to your waist and smiles widely again like he had done when you met him at Seutondu. “Sure, we can go out together again. How about dinner this time?”

♡♡♡♡

“Kihyun.”

He looks up to you with a raised brow but doesn’t answer, deciding to look down at the menu in his hands one more time.

“ _Kihyun._ ”

“Yes?” He answers this time, obviously a little more concerned as to what you’re calling him for.

“Check your phone.”

Kihyun shakes his head and gestures to everyone sitting around you. They were all having conversations with each other and no one dared touch their phone because it would surely ruin the atmosphere. “You’re sitting opposite me, just talk to me.”

“Fine,” you mumble. Adjusting the cuffs at the end of your sleeves, you take a deep breath and bite down on your lip a little from nervousness. “This place is really expensive, Kihyun.”

He shrugs off your statement like it means nothing. “It’s fine. I said I would pay so don’t worry about it – we’re spending time together, right?”

“Well, yes, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad.”

Kihyun had text you before to tell you to wear something fancy and you assumed that it was just his way of getting you to wear more than jeans and a tee shirt. Not that you minded too much, because Kihyun was wearing his black shirt and black choker and black _everything_ that looked beyond good on him.

His attempt to soothe your nerves comes with his hand resting over yours gently. “Five dates now and you still feel bad? Believe me, if I didn’t like you this much then I would actually mind. So just accept me paying for this as a token of my affection.”

“Most guys just ask the girl they like to be their girlfriend instead of spending a tonne of money on them,” you tell Kihyun.

It’s too forward and you know it the second you say it. Kihyun, much to your dismay, looks down at the table and hums but doesn’t say a word in response. You know in your own mind you shouldn’t have said what you did but you’d have to just move on with it and accept what you said for now.

Kihyun isn’t annoyed, you tell yourself. Though he looks up with a slightly darkened expression he’s _not_ annoyed. “I wouldn’t know how to ask someone out like that.”

“What?”

_Shit. Shit. That’s too forward again._

“I’ll be honest with you, despite the fact it might change your perception of me,” Kihyun says. He takes a deep breath, pushing his hair back from his eyes and sighing. “I’ve never had a girlfriend before. They either think I’m too rude or prefer my friends over me.”

You nod, mostly to avoid saying something stupid. You don’t want to patronise Kihyun or make him feel awkward so instead you smile softly and move your own hand so it’s on top of his. “You’ve been meeting the wrong people, then. You need to find someone who appreciates you for you.”

"What about you?” Kihyun asks. He pauses before he carries on and his eyes search your own for something; anything. “I mean, what do you think of me?”

“Whilst at first I thought you were going to murder me for mistaking you for roses, I actually think you’re pretty sweet. You’ve got a strange sense of humour and although you like to tell me I’m not wearing a thick enough jacket and you lecture me on what kind of detergent to use, you’ll never know how happy I am that you were the one at Seutondu.”

You don’t want to feel sorry for Kihyun but it comes with every word he says. The bitterness between him and Minhyuk was understandable now – if Minhyuk _had_ encouraged that girl to listen to Kihyun and it had been complete sabotage then the Kihyun had a reason to be pissed with Minhyuk. Except, there was no proof in it and you were still caught up on the cute, couldn’t hurt a fly personality of Minhyuk.

Though you knew you had an attraction to Kihyun, whatever it was. Every time you spent time with him it would bring a smile to your face, and every time he spoke to you there was butterflies in your stomach because he made you feel so…

_Special._

That was how you could describe it. The way he would look at you like you’re the only person left in the world. How he would wrap an arm around you when he was walking with you and it was cold. When he would shower you in attention at every given moment because he wanted to show you why you meant to him.

"You’re making me feel bad now,” Kihyun states. He bows his head and laughs gently as his cheeks begin to turn a pinkish colour. “Now I feel like I should ask you to be my girlfriend.”

You pout, resting your chin in your palm as though you’re thinking of a solution to the problem. It was actually cute, how shy he was at heart. “What if I ask you to be my boyfriend?”

“Then I’ll say no so that I can ask you instead.”

“That is brutally honest,” you answer. It still leaves you with a grin nonetheless. “Yah, you’re not rude. You’re just honest. Honesty is better than anything else in my opinion.”

Kihyun cracks a smile and his blush becomes far deeper than before. He’s almost so caught up in your words that he almost misses the waiter who asks for his order, which he just about manages to stutter out whilst still blushing over your previous words.

It’s pretty much quiet afterwards. You both eat with the occasional conversation about whatever one of you started about. It’s not an awkward silence though, it’s comfortable and you like it because it makes you feel as though you’ve known him for years. It’s a good thing, really, because sometimes it would be more awkward sitting with Changkyun alone.

You don’t know everything about Kihyun. There’s tonnes of things that you’re yet to discover about the pink haired boy who works as a florist and has a bit of an attitude, but you want to find everything out. _Twenty years._ It was a long period of time but was completely doable.

Over twenty years you could learn so much more about Kihyun and it makes everything feel sickly sweet just thinking about it. But you know right from the bottom of your heart that there’s always going to be that doubt in his mind. You were going to pick Minhyuk over him, even if it was accidental.

It was hard not to look at Kihyun and feel a little regret each time he caught your eyes because it would always be in his mind that Minhyuk was your first choice. A low blow to his ego, that’s what it was – whether he’d ever be able to put that aside you were unsure.

“You look really nice by the way,” Kihyun tells you. He’d slipped his hand round your waist and was comfortably guiding you down the road now with minimal distance between the two of you. “Ignore that. You look beautiful. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

You end up leaning your head into his shoulder to try and cover your face a little, his words hitting you quite hard in terms of the embarrassment factor. “You’re too kind to me, Kihyun.”

“You’re allowed to say no to me, but…” Kihyun stops walking and instead turns to you. It seems as though his heart is beating so hard in his chest now and you can only tell because he’s breathing really, _really_ hard. “…would you be my first kiss?”

If you had been drinking some of that fancy sparkling water Kihyun ordered right now, it would have been spat out faster than anyone would have imagined. “Sorry?”

“Ignore what I said, I’m sorry.”

“No, Kihyun, wait.” Your hand reaches for his arm before he can carry on walking and you stop him from walking away. Albeit he doesn’t use a lot of effort to walk away to begin with, making it seem as though he wanted you to pull him back anyway. “You’ve never kissed anyone?”

Kihyun nods shyly. “Lame, I know. No girlfriend, never had been kissed, I’m probably—”

He doesn’t get to finish; you’re reaching towards him with one hand on his upper arm and the other on his chest, seconds away from pressing your lips to his. Highly anticipated, that’s exactly what it is, and by the time his lips are touching yours the only thing you can think of is _Kihyun._

He tastes like strawberries and it matches his hair exactly. There’s a hint of vanilla which remind you of ice cream, the truly sweetest ice cream in the world. Though he’s frozen in place you’re lost in the kiss you share with him and not part of you wishes to pull away. You’re just worried that he might not be able to breathe, _or something._

Forget that. _You_ are the one that can’t breathe. You are the one that’s intoxicated.

“Woah.”

Kihyun’s mumbled word expresses your own emotion too. His face is blank as he stares at you with wide eyes, his entire body frozen. His cheeks are as pink as his hair and it leaves you with a smile on your own lips.

“You’re not so lame now, I guess,” you tell him.

“I didn’t expect you to do that,” Kihyun admits. He snaps out of whatever trance he’s in and snaps into reality. If you were holding his hands you would have noticed how sweaty his palms were, and if you still had your hand on his heat you’d have realised his heart rate never slowed down. “I—uh—thank you. Thanks.”

You rolls your eyes at Kihyun and turn away from him, but reach for his hand to pull him with you. He is a little reluctant to go this time. “You don’t have to thank me. If I didn’t want to kiss you then I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Will you be my girlfriend?” Kihyun asks, rather suddenly. It’s a burst in his confidence and it definitely takes you by surprise, so much so you don’t even turn back to Kihyun to answer him.

To him it might have looked like hesitation but as soon as the words left his mouth there’s a smile on your face that’s wider than anything before. Either way, you both get the answer you want to hear.

♡♡♡♡

“Excuse me,” you ask softly. Curse your slightly anxiety that came with talking to strangers. Well, did he count as a stranger? You weren’t sure. This was too awkward.

“Ye— _woah_.”

“Uh…” you frown a little at the actions of the boy in front of you. Blue ends of white hair on the middle store of the flower store. Only one person that could be. “Hi, you’re Hoseok right?”

He flashes you the smirk that only a god that was made for the most illustrious of tasks could pull off. His perfectly white teeth and even more perfect body is all presented to you on a silver platter, just with a smile. _Holy_ _fucking shit_. He’s everything in the world that Yoojung has looked for. “And you must be the answers to my prayers. Nice to meet you.”

“I—um—no, I’m a customer here,” you tell him. His confidence is too much; he differs so much to Kihyun that it makes you question why they were friends.

Well, it was like that with Kihyun, Minhyuk _and_ Hoseok now. They were each completely different and all of them just seemed like they were all rejected from different cliques at school and forced to sit on different tables and somehow all started talking about Pokémon or something. That seemed reasonable. You could imagine all of them sitting down with their Pokémon cards in the middle of the dinning hall during school.

“Oh—!” Hoseok suddenly changes his tone, though you’re sure it’s not just because of you being confident in replying to him, too. You’d have to check if there was a manager walking around here before you made any sudden moves. “Well, in that case… how can I help?”

Hoseok seems to lose all of his charisma in the second and ends up scratching the back of his neck to compensate for the fact he’s such an awkward mess. He’s even blushing a little like Kihyun does whenever he claims you’re being cute. “I need to know what Kihyun’s favourite flowers are?”

“ _Yoo Kihyun_?”

“Yes, Yoo Kihyun. The one with the pink hair, works upstairs, secretly likes Disney movies and drinks coffee until 2am every night?” You explain. Hoseok seems at a loss. “You know him, right?”

It was honestly strange carrying that ‘ _girlfriend_ ’ title. You’d known Kihyun little over three months now, starting from when you started texting him the day after you did really meet him. Been his girlfriend for a sixth of that, and it felt strange. Being someone’s girlfriend right now was the strangest thing in the world right now because…

Because it just was. That was the only explanation to it.

You’d get a warm feeling run throughout you when Kihyun would text you and butterflies when he called because hearing his voice was a godsend and he had the nicest voice in the world which realistically _was_ the strangest part of him to fall in love with first but it was happening. His voice. _Ugh_. You could listen to him talk all night long and not bat an eyelid. Even if he was just reading out the Korean to Czech dictionary and every word was pronounced wrong.

But aside from that point, you could tell he was a little awkward. No girlfriend before you – he had stuff to live up to but you had a whole lot more. Kihyun _must_ have imagined what having a girlfriend was like before so you had to fit that description which, for someone who found it hard to ask a store employee where the mouthwash was so Changkyun could have some normal sanitation, was hard. He had to live up to your previous boyfriends and by anyone’s standards he was beating them by a mile.

He’d been reluctant to hold your hand at first even when you were alone and rather bash fully asked if he could but after doing it once he would not stop. Then he had the trouble of finding the right excuse to kiss you again and after you had told him that he could kiss you whenever he wanted – and without an excuse – Kihyun still managed to approach that situation with light feet. Imagine what it would be like when he realised that _sex_ actually happened. Shit. You hadn’t even thought about that yet. _Lies._

Kihyun was simply Kihyun. That was all you wanted from him. You hoped that you were all he wanted you to be, too.

“I know him,” Hoseok says. He looks a bit shocked with his parted lips and raised brows. “He doesn’t like flowers, really. I guess. I’ve never seen him buy any or even say he likes them. Why? Do you like him?”

It was debatable whether or not you should outright say _here’s the thing – I’m his girlfriend!_ They were Kihyun’s friends (kind of?) and he had the right to tell them whenever he wanted. Just because you went home and squealed on Jooheon’s bed until everyone, even Changkyun, gathered in the room so you could tell them that very same day, doesn’t mean he had to do the same thing.

“I just want to buy him flowers. Can’t I do that? What if he saved my cat and I want to thank him?”

Hoseok hums. He glances around the shop until something catches his eye and soon enough he’s gesturing for the person to come over. “Hold on, I think this guy will know.”

To your surprise, you don’t recognise who it is that Hoseok has called over. In fact, he looks older than the three boys (only by a little though) and looks a whole lot friendly. A manager, maybe? Store owner? His uniform is different and he also had a name badge that’s a completely different colour to the others. His name is Hyunwoo accoutring the to badge and he has a wide smile that makes him seem genuine.

“Hi,” he greets. He turns to you and bows his head a little and you’re sure he assumes you’re just a friend of Hoseok’s. “What’s the problem, Hoseok?”

“Do you have any idea what kind of flowers Yoo Kihyun likes? I can’t think of any.”

Hyunwoo, just like Hoseok, hums. He doesn’t exactly know what to say to you and you’re sure it’s for the exact same reason that Hoseok did too. The two work in sync and it’s _weird._ Maybe they all just know him too well and you were… fifth wheeling despite being Kihyun’s girlfriend? Wow. That’s weird. “Actually, no. I don’t. He’s never bought any. He told me he didn’t like flowers because they die once you’ve cut them. He’s a bit of a weird boy, actually – he doesn’t like much.”

“Other than Disney,” Hoseok corrects whilst sending a wink in your direction. You try not to make things awkward so just nod in his direction. He seemed like he would get on well with Jooheon.

“Yeah, and being late for work on Saturdays,” Hyunwoo tells you. He’s friendly too but in a different way to what Hoseok is. He must be some kind of supervisor because you have seen him around before but you’ve never seen him making leisurely chit chat with friends. “What’s it for, anyway?”

Hoseok smiles widely to talks before you have the chance, “it’s because he saved her cat and she wants to thank him. I’ll find her some, don’t worry.”

Hyunwoo, unfortunately does not save you from Hoseok. He nods and bows his head again before returning to whatever he was doing before leaving you to cope on your own. The last thing you needed to see now was Minhyuk.

To say you were surprised he didn’t show up just when you thought that was an understatement.

“I actually think some pink roses would go perfectly,” you say quietly. Hoseok hears you, but doesn’t stop despite his altered direction. At least he was going to give you what you wanted, you supposed.

Pink roses would cut it, you suppose. Since he told you the first time you saw him to change the fake pink roses for real ones you supposed they’d be cute enough as a _I’ve known you for a while now and I definitely think you’re cute_ present. To be fair, you knew he was cute a long time ago you were just too shy to admit it. He was slightly intimidatingly beautiful in a strange way.

“Pink roses?” Hoseok asks. He’s led you right to what you wanted without saying a word until you’ve reached your destination. “You’re giving him a flower that is distinct of love? Don’t you know Kihyun at all?”

You raise an eyebrow slowly. “What’s wrong with pink roses?”

“Well, other than the fact Kihyun hates the idea of love and despises cute things like pink roses and Valentine’s Day, nothing. It’s an odd present to give to the guy who hates those kinds of things. Maybe just buy him some lilies or pansies or… I don’t know. Mugunghwa. He’ll probably just throw it away.”

 _Oh_. Kihyun hasn’t said anything about you. It doesn’t come as a surprise because he said they weren’t nearly as close as you were with _most_ of your friends but by the sounds of it Hoseok knew a lot about Kihyun – especially in terms of relationships. Definitely more than you knew and that was slightly scary.

“I didn’t know he felt like that,” you answer, truthfully.

“He’s been the same since he was in school and he messed up his confession to this girl who was pretty popular,” Hoseok tells you. He doesn’t even seem phased as he starts to pry at some roses and collect some. “She mocked him about it for years. Oh, we both went to school together if you didn’t know. Is twelve enough?”

You nod carefully. The story did seem to be legitimate but you had a feeling between the two of them they weren’t telling you the whole truth. Something more definitely went on for Kihyun to be _scared_ of love. “Twelve is fine. And I know, Kihyun told me. He said about what happened and I felt bad for him to be honest. It must suck to like someone that much and be so traumatised that you won’t get a girlfriend after, huh?”

“You’re right. He’s scared of another girl rejecting him and getting with his friend like before.”

There’s another frown etched on your face at this. “His friend got with that girl he confessed to?”

“Oh yeah of course! Why do you think Kihyun is so hung up over it?” Hoseok asks. He inspects the flowers in his hands and then begins to wrap them carefully like he’s been trained to do, all whilst finishing his story. “He thought he was in love, confessed to the girl but it didn’t go right and she mocked him and started dating Minhyuk instead. Enough to put someone off dating for years, am I right?”

 _Very right_. That explained the bitterness between them.

♡♡♡♡

“Kihyunie,” you mumble softly, shutting your eyes tighter. You could still feel him gently shaking you and it was so annoyingly sweet that you were close to kicking him in the balls. “Kihyun, leave me alone. It’s not even light outside.”

Kihyun, however, is surprisingly quiet. Cold, too - that’s the strangest thing. It almost makes you want to open your eyes but the two of you had been out all day so theoretically he should be tired too. Tired enough to stay in bed until at least…

“Wake up man!” Jooheon says. He throws a pillow at your chest in an attempt to get you up and it works this time – only your eyes go straight to the digital clock on your wall.

_Three forty two am?_

"Fuck o—!” You make an attempt to shout but Jooheon covers your mouth before you can get any louder than before. He glares at you until you know you shouldn’t shout and instead watch Jooheon seriously. He’s tired, you can tell by his red eyes. He does finally let go of your mouth and you’re able to speak, only because you beat him to it. “What’s wrong, Jooheon?”

Jooheon rolls his eyes and grabs your wrist to pull you up with him. “It’s Kihyun. I know he’s not been here before but… this is so awkward. He’s your boyfriend and we…”

“You what?”

“We—just come on. I’m too tired for this.”

Today had been the first time Kihyun stayed at your apartment. A month and a bit into a relationship that you both seemed to be taking _very_ slow and you were only just now starting to sleep in the same bed together. Well, your fell asleep on his couch in his arms loads of times now but this time was different. Kihyun actually got to be the big spoon and have your back resting against his chest and it was _so_ cute. Snapchat worthy of course.

It had all started out a bit weird at first. Kihyun showed up at just past five, when he finished work, but somehow he managed to end up being later than everyone else. Which just made things awkward. Jooheon had been the one who opened the door to him and Kihyun was forced to sit next to Yoojung because Changkyun wouldn’t move from where he was siting next to you. Kihyun was subject to Yoojung and Jooheon’s questioning and Changkyun even asked a question pretty much out of the blue, which made you actually believe they all _liked_ Kihyun. It had been an improvement on any previous dates you’d had.

After you had managed to pull Kihyun away all you ended up doing was sitting in bed watching YouTube videos together. At one point Kihyun had offered to do your make up but you turned him down due to the fact he didn’t even know what the beauty blender was (‘ _is that like, what dogs chew on when they’re bored?’_ ), despite the claims that his artist skills were on point. You believed him, but you also didn’t want to shatter his ego when you washed it all off in 0.0003 seconds.

You really thought it was all over but apparently not. Now you were standing at the foot of Jooheon’s bed staring at Kihyun who was cuddled up to Jooheon’s pillows.

“He got in bed with me and,” Jooheon looks you dead in the eyes as though his life depended on it, “he touched me and said your name really _weird_.”

 _Oh_. You’re not sure whether to laugh at what Jooheon’s said or the fact Kihyun thought Jooheon was you. He would never live this down either way. “Sleep in my bed tonight and I’ll buy you pizza tomorrow.”

“Okay but stay away from the top drawer.”

“Why would I…” you try to pry at his statement but Jooheon’s gone before you have a chance to. He was always a strange character and you weren’t going to start arguing with him not about whatever the fuck he had in there. It probably wasn’t even that deep, maybe he had a collection of toothbrushes in there. “ _Right_.”

You timidly move towards the bed, sitting down on the edge closet to Kihyun so you still had an escape route if for some reason he was having some kind of lucid dream and began attacking you. _He wouldn’t do that, duh._ Better to be safe though, judging on how the other people you lived with reacted when you tried to wake them up you ended up having a black eye at the end of all of it.

But in the end you just wake him up and it ends up being fine. Your hand that just brushes his shoulder had him stirring straight away, making you smile from how cute he looks like this. He even rubs his eyes like a soft baby that hasn’t slept in days.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

You can’t help but laugh at his words that are so clueless compared to everything else. He _is_ clueless and it reminds you that your pink haired, doe eyed boyfriend may just be the softest person to exist on this planet.  “You are in Jooheon’s bed, Kihyunie.”

“Am I?” Kihyun questions, sitting up a little taller so he can look around the room and confirm his suspicions. You can see the change in his face when he realises that he is, in fact, in Jooheon’s bed. “Oh, _shit_. Uh, I’m sorry. I thought this was the right room.”

You frown at his words playfully. “So… Jooheon is just as nice to cuddle as I am?”

“I _cuddled_ with him?” Kihyun asks, more as a statement to confirm it to himself.

“Oh yeah, Jooheon was really scared that you’d actually developed a crush on him over the time you’ve known him,” you answer mockingly. Kihyun’s face _is_ priceless. “He ran into my room and begged me to get you out because, and I quote, you were saying my name _really weird_. Is he better to spoon with, _huh_ Kihyun?”

Kihyun shakes his head immediately and leans forward to sooth you. H hand brushes over your shoulder as he brings you closer to him and almost immediately a shiver runs down your spine. “He’s not better. I honestly thought it was you.”

His half-asleep (kind of morning) voice is too good to resist. It’s like a little piece of heaven that was delivered to you without warning and now you _knew_ you wanted to hear it every day – even for the next twenty years. You were most certainly craving Kihyun, and those feelings appeared to be reciprocated.

“Sorry again,” Kihyun mumbles. It’s directly on your lips now, and the way he makes your skin vibrate ever so slightly hurts you in the best of ways; it _makes_ you rush forward and press your lips to his hungrily for a taste. Kihyun only reciprocates, following back into the kiss you started.

It was gentle at first, you were sure of that. When Kihyun kissed you it was like pressing your lips to cotton candy or the softest of furs, just until you moaned into the kiss accidently and a new part of him was ignited. He stopped for a second, still moulded against you, and pulled you closer to him until your bodies were flush and barely even air could move between you.

“ _Yoo_ _Kihyun_.”

“What is it?” Kihyun asks. He almost immediately stops what he’s doing because he’s worried he’s done something wrong; even his eyes show fear as he glances down at you from his higher position. The hand on your shoulder becomes a little tense and all it does is send more shivers through your body.

“Your…” you can’t exactly bring yourself to say anything. You’re not at that stage yet and you’ve never said anything remotely intimate to Kihyun past ‘ _your lips are so kissable, to be honest, I wanna do it some more_ ’. So now, you’re stuck looking down at the slight space between you two and where your bodies met at the bottom. “Uh, Kihyun. I don’t want this to be awkward.”

Kihyun just makes it more awkward by laughing like he really had no idea what to say. Realistically he doesn’t, you have to remind yourself of this all the damn time. “It’s not awkward. How can I make this less awkward?”

“Just… tell me to stop if you feel uncomfortable, okay?”

The shy nod that Kihyun gives you in response – alongside the red cheeks he sports – confirm that Kihyun has some idea where you’re taking this. It’s not like you were going to act as if sex wasn’t an important part of your relationship but anyone else you’d been with had most definitely done something before with someone. Even that really drunken night with Jooheon – he’d done stuff with girls before you.

Kihyun looked like he’d been a master at making girls scream until he admitted to you that he was the purest person you had probably ever met.

And the strangest thing? He wasn’t even in a rush to get you to do anything with him.  

Sure, you’d noticed he’d been hard before and you’d wanted to say something but you’d put it off. That one time he’d fell asleep next to you and you’d accidentally brushed over his pants and you were sure that Kihyun moaned but you weren’t going to pull him up there and then like _hey Kihyun I’m gonna suck your dick._ So you left it, like the other times you’d got a hint and Kihyun didn’t try to initiate anything so you were here now.

He keeps his eyes on you as you brush your fingertips over the sweatpants he’s wearing, just tracing the area that is bulging visibly. Kihyun’s hands are twisted in the sheets so that he doesn’t moan too loudly, but much to your contentment he doesn’t actually tell you to stop and just lets you get on with what you were doing. You don’t even have to get him to move in the right ways, he just does it without even thinking.

"C-Can I…” you pause as you try to think of the right words to say. He wouldn’t judge you too much if you were crude, right? God this was awkward. Uh. Fuck it. “Can I suck you off?”

Kihyun nod hesitantly, opting not to speak as he lets his back lean against the head board of the bed that was supporting him before. You move your body to suit how he’s sitting, crawling in the space between his legs and resting between his thighs. Slowly your fingertips creep into the hem of his boxers, teasing his naked skin that was _so_ soft. You can only stare as you begin to pull them down to reveal his untouched skin.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me doing this?” you question Kihyun, meeting his eyes for a moment. After you see him nod, you take him fully in your hand, pulling down his boxers with your other. The black of the material completely contrasts his flush red colour and it makes you rush to brush your thumb over his tip. Kihyun’s reaction says it all – he _does_ want this.

“F-Fuck, please suck me. Please.”

Hearing his soft moans, you direct your tongue to slowly cover his tip and then move down to his shaft, leaving a wet strip down his entire length. Though your lips caress his head and you try to make this memorable, you just want to make him cum. You imagine he’ll look ethereal when he comes.

Kihyun’s hands are buried in the black sheets that line Jooheon’s bed, his eyes partially closed and mouth agape as he feels you take him into your mouth. His hips seem to only move a little, his inexperience leaving him with an inability to know what to tell you, or force you, to do. Instead of trying to push himself onto you, he waits for your lips to move further down his length and gives you space to take your time with him. You suck gently, leaving your hand at his base to hold what doesn’t fit in.

Your tongue is quick to run over the vein on the underside of his shaft that is rather prominent, the pulsating feeling causing you to moan yourself around his dick and have him a panting mess beside you. Thank god he didn’t moan too loud otherwise tomorrow you’d be in the dog house; especially with Jooheon.

The small whimpers from Kihyun’s lips are almost music to your ears, encouraging you to take him deeper and let your fingertips squeeze gently onto his balls, massaging what you could. You continue for a moment, hearing Kihyun get louder. Pulling away, you make sure to leave your lips on his tip for as long as humanly possible. Noticing the lack of your presence on him, Kihyun lifts his head up slightly to catch your eyes. You can’t resist asking him the question you’d be dying to know the answer to. “Kihyun, do you think you can cum for me?”

He nods desperately, teeth sinking into his lip as he sees your head dip back down towards him. You let your tongue gently massage his lip before you take more of him into your mouth, swirling your tongue around him and making sure to spend extra time on the one throbbing vein at the side. Hearing his moans increase, you bob your head up and down his length to speed him up.

It doesn’t take long for his seed to be falling down your throat, his pants from above you filling the room as you swallow what you can. You pull away from him, using the back of your hand to wipe any of his cum that fell from your lips. His eyes are still shut, hands clutching the sheets as he comes down from his high. You take the opportunity to pull his boxers completely down his legs as you stand up, leaving them with his shirt to the side.

You kneel again on the bed beside Kihyun, this time to his right and closer to his head. His eyes slowly open to meet yours, his breathing slightly out of time and disordered, a layer of sweat holding his hair to his forehead. You reach forward, pushing his hair back again and then leaving a short kiss on his lips again. “Do you want to stop?”

Kihyun doesn’t hesitate to curl his fingers around the band on your underwear, giving you an obvious no as he is pulling the black material down from your hips and dragging it over your thighs, leaving you to kick them off so that he could place himself between your thighs. You were sure he’d done this before in his head. He didn’t need help. He didn’t need you to tell him what to do and now he was just going to return the favour with you.

His eyes were still darkened as he stared into your eyes, watching you carefully to distract you from his moments. He moves his thumb to rub your clit, causing an immediate whimper to fall from your lips - he has been practicing, he _must_ have been practising because he acted like he was a pro. You would have forgotten he’d _never_ done this before if he hadn’t have paused to just stare at you like you were truly a goddess in his eyes.

Kihyun’s thumb pulls away from your clit, all the while he brings his fingers to his mouth to lick your slick from them, sighing when he gets a taste of you and finds out he thoroughly enjoys it. Of course he doesn’t know what you do and don’t like, so it’s all like an experiment. He has to work out what you do want him to do and what he actually enjoys doing. You don’t love everything that he does but you at least like it to some degree.

Except, he was agonisingly slow. He had to saviour every minute he could – your taste was all over him and he didn’t want anything else at the time, only you.

“Is this okay?” Kihyun asks, his breath causing a vibration against your core that caused your breathing to increase. It’s the first time he asked and he doesn’t seem to realise that you’re a mess in his hands.

You nod but refrain from answering immediately in case it comes out like a squeak. “Keep doing that, Kihyun.”

Before he lets his tongue at you again, he nips at your left thigh, which you’re sure he’s picked up in some kind of video that a girl would usually moan at, but all he does is leave a mark on your skin. When he does finally turn back to you, he runs his tongue flat against you and again sucks at your sensitive spot that he had remembered expertly.

“C-Can we…”

Kihyun is just as nervous as you were, if not more. It almost makes you feel bad. “You can fuck me, Kihyun. I want you to.”

Really, that is all the guidance he needs into giving you what you wanted. He guides his length into you, stopping when he presses his tip into you and hears you gasp at the sudden adjustment. He’s _big_. He gives you a moment, bringing his head back up towards you and buries it in the crook of your neck so he can go back to almost the exact same spot he was paying attention to before.

“You feel so good,” he mumbles against your skin. You’re in a haze so his words don’t exactly touch you where they’re meant to, but feeling him fully inside you sets the tone for what this is about. It was your first time with Kihyun but it was his first time _ever_. His hands are either side of your shoulders to hold him up and make it easier to move inside of you.

Kihyun pulls out slowly, and eases himself back in with an audible grunt. Slow, like he said it would be, but it’s almost so slow that you can’t get anything from it. His ow groans that are surprisingly quiet leaves vibrations against your skin and it makes you drag one of your hands down from his hair and to his back, scraping over his shirt that covers his skin. You could only wish you were marking his skin right now because Kihyun was _yours_ and you couldn’t ask for more.

He kisses you to confuse you even more with his multitasking and his hips hit your own every so often that you can’t even remember the latter part of the sentence anymore. He brings his tongue into it, swiping the underside of your lip before pulling out and slamming back in, hard. He’d never kissed you like this before but you were so glad he did now.

“Shit,” you whisper against his lips, arching your back again like before. It’s just in the right place to have you basically screaming but today you knew you couldn’t make noise. Not that you were usually particularly loud anyway, but it was the middle of the damn night and you were more awake than ever.

“Am I okay?” Kihyun questions, nose brushing yours as he presses a wet kiss against your top lip. He looks so smug as he asks, you’ve already given him an answer in how you react to each of his movements. “Can I make you cum too?”

Another nod, this time with less enthusiasm because the knot in your stomach is getting tighter and tighter. Kihyun must have noticed the way your eyes squeezed shut and lips gapped, and realised you were close. He was, too, judging by the facial expression he gave that matched it like before. He hit you where you wanted – right in a spot you had a feeling he’d never let go of.

You didn’t want him to let go, either.

♡♡♡♡

This was awkward, to say the least.

You have been in far more compromising positions than this but sometimes you just got a feeling that things would be _awful_ and now was an exact example of that time. So you would have to stay calm for the time being; that way you could lessen the chance that you’d feel too awkward to even stay in the room.

“I’m sorry, Minhyuk,” you mumble. It follows the look of disappointment he gave you when you walked in to the flower store and directly asked for _Kihyun._ “I should have come by sooner and said hi to you.”

Minhyuk, however, does not frown. He smiles widely as if he doesn’t care despite the look of anger in his eyes. “It’s not a problem, you don’t have to apologise to me! How have you been, anyway?”

_I went on a date with the person who is effectively your worst enemy who thinks you’re an absolute dickhead, thinking that they were you, and now seven months down the road we’re in a relationship and I’m pretty sure it’s going to last because Kihyun is an absolute angel._

“I’ve been good, still thankful of the lady who keeps saving my friend’s ass!” you answer. Much plainer than the answer you were originally anticipating.

“So why do you need to see Kihyun?” Minhyuk asks. He changes topic very quickly and it almost shows on his face that he didn’t care for much more than what he asked you about. “Need him to find you some more flowers upstairs? I can help you if you like.”

You shake your head and Minhyuk seems to get more tense. Maybe it’s the part of you inside that tells you the sweet and innocent looking boy in front of you is exactly like what Kihyun (and, partially, Hoseok) made him out to be. He looked less than mad but still _angry._ It’s something you notice as you keep quiet and contemplate how to make your escape upstairs.

“Okay well, I haven’t seen him. So maybe he’s not working today? I’ll check with Hyunwoo if you want.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s working,” you answer. Kihyun wouldn’t lie that he was working to piss you off. He might have liked to be rude but Kihyun _still_ wanted to always make you smile and had no intention to wrong you – like making you go to a flower shop to see him when he’s not there. “I’ll go upstairs and check. I want to get some sunflowers anyway, my friend has been pretty down recently.”

 _Oh, yeah._ Changkyun had recently broke up with his girlfriend and was now in the most depressing mood you’d ever seen. So things were not great – Kihyun was your only chance to actually be happy now that Jooheon was always out and Yoojung was working more. It really did suck having to be either at work or alone, so you made use of all the times you and Kihyun got to spend together.

“Wait!” Minhyuk makes a grab for your wrist but immediately stops himself when he catches your eyes. Fire was in them; he _knew_ you were closer to Kihyun than you made out to be. It was a dangerous field to be playing in but right now you were going to carry on like you did before with Hoseok and Hyunwoo. It would work if Minhyuk was as forgiving as they were.

“Yes?”

“You’re his girlfriend, aren’t you?”

That made things _very_ awkward. Minhyuk clearly wants an answer and you’re not exactly prepared to give him one because you’re still unsure of what Kihyun is telling his friends. Sure he might have mentioned your name and now you knew they were aware of him actually having a girlfriend but then, quite unfortunately, you were now aware they didn’t know _who_ his girlfriend was. So it was awkward. Really annoyingly awkward.

“I’ll see you around Minhyuk,” you tell him instead, avoiding the question he has asked. It bought you some time to turn around to walk towards the stairs, except you meet Kihyun’s eyes at the bottom of the stairs and he has a mix of emotions that become more unstable when Minhyuk starts to talk again.

“Why can’t you answer me?” Minhyuk asks, “are you embarrassed that he’s your boyfriend? Don’t want people to know about him?”

 _That is not the answer_. You could give a whole speech in response but your body was frozen by the look of disappointment on Kihyun’s face. You could tell yourself he’d know this was all a misunderstanding but something told you just by the way that he was composed that would not be the case – he’d let his emotions get the better of him, as expected.

So you turn back to Minhyuk and the smirk on his lips that he’s trying to hide is physically disgusting to you. He’s not this sweet boy you made him out to be. He’s Kihyun’s worst nightmare and now it was hitting you. “He’s my boyfriend. Kihyun and I are together. What’s your point?”

“It’s completely understandable, actually. I wouldn’t want people to know someone like that was with me.”

“Sorry?” You have to resist turning back to Kihyun to see his reaction but you somehow know that he’s not saying anything because around Minhyuk he’s a completely different person. He’s shy and hates confrontation when around the boy. Instead you fight for him. “Person like what?”

Minhyuk starts to laugh and it gets even more sinister every time the footsteps you hear around you get closer. He was making sure Kihyun heard _everything_. “You know, a submissive piece of virgin ass. Must have been so awkward when he came within thirty seconds of you touching him.”

“Actually,” you start, shrugging your shoulders a little, “he ate me out better than you ever could have. I love him for it, actually.”

“He–what?”

Minhyuk looks at a loss for words. You can tell he is by the way that he looks over at you like you’re speaking Hungarian to him or something, obviously expecting something completely different to what you actually said to him. It was quite funny to see such a strong character crash and burn with such a simple statement.

There was also Kihyun, who you noticed now was just behind you with a completely emotionless look on his face. He didn’t like public confrontation despite the fact he liked arguing, and you weren’t yet sure if he was happy you’d said something back to Minhyuk or just plain _embarrassed._

He did work here, and the customers that were stood around would most definitely see him here again. So now they knew he was particularly gifted at certain things it might be a little hard for them to look him in the eye from time to time.

“You _love_ me for it?” Kihyun asks. His fingers just brush against your wrist and it causes you to turn completely to him, which ends with you looking completely perplexed. _Why_ did he pick up on _that_ part of the conversation?

“I’m sorry Minhyuk, but Kihyun isn’t as pathetic as you make him out to be.” You completely ignore Kihyun’s question and instead turn back to Minhyuk who looks to be truly lost at the situation. Minhyuk always stood above Kihyun, but it seems that the tables were turning now and he didn’t actually like it. But now it was just awkward – you were standing in a three with the most uncomfortable silence of your life. “If you’ll excuse us…”

You practically drag Kihyun back towards the stairs, despite his quiet demeanour. You can assume now that he’s silent because of what you and Minhyuk both said since he doesn’t attempt to say a word until you reach the top of the steps to the third floor. He just grabs your hand and prevents you from entering the floor he called his own.

“ _Um_ , can you wait?” Kihyun asks. He sounds hesitant and it’s the first thing you pick up on after his still pink cheeks which compliment his hair so well. “I – _uh_ – there’s a reason I asked you to come here today. I didn’t think that… that would happen.”

A laugh leaves your lips at his statement. “I don’t think any of us expected that to happen, Kihyun. Minhyuk doesn’t seem like the type to be so forward.”

“Oh, no. Not that. I expected him to be a complete dickhead but I didn’t expect you to say what you said even if you meant it in a completely innocent way. Like, _love_ , you said you _love_ me for it. Did you mean it or was it just an expression?”

 _Well, you never thought about that_. You’d said it because you just thought about it like that but you were actually starting to think about it now. Did you say love because you _actually_ love him? _Fuck._ This is awkward. You had nothing to say to him. Of course you loved him, that was undoubtable.

Had you fallen in love with him though?

“Don’t answer, just follow me,” Kihyun tells you. He doesn’t seem dispaointed and it makes you more confident to answer him now, but you follow his command and instead just walk behind him into the open room where you’d met him to begin with.

The first thing you see is pink. A hell of a lot of pink.

“Of course I wanted this to be different and I was hoping that you’d walk up here and be like _oh my god Kihyunie_ like you always end up doing, and it would be super sweet and everything, but it’s not because Minhyuk had to ruin things which is lame but… Yeah. I had to tell you this.”

Kihyun takes a step to the side and you are surprised to say the least. There’s a formation of flowers that cover the floor by the staff only door, and Hyungwoo stands with Hoseok to his left, the flowers before them and their obnoxiously happy grins on their faces. Kihyun had most definitely prepared this for a long time to get Hoseok and Hyungwoo together and organise this all.

‘ _I love you’_

“I hope that it’s not too much,” Kihyun states. He loosely hangs his hands over your shoulders and leans in towards you, but you’re just too surprised to even _speak_. “But I guess that I really wanted you to know. So, uh, yeah. I love you. Surprise!”

You turn to Kihyun with a smile on your lips that’s slight but noticeable. You’re still taken aback by his action and it basically silences you, just to the point where all you can do is reach forward to kiss his cheek in thanks. Kihyun _is_ the sweetest person you’d ever known, and there was no chance in hell you ever regretted meeting him. “I love you, too.”


End file.
